CANYON COUNTRY, Calif.—We caught up with Girlfriends Films owner Dan O'Connell on the set as he was directing the (untitled) "benefit movie" for stricken actress Elexis Monroe, and almost as an aside, he broke the news that Girlfriends Films, which for six years has made its home in an industrial park in Reseda, has now moved, lock, stock and barrel, to its new home on Witherspoon Parkway in Valencia, in northern Los Angeles County.
"We've now moved out of our five facilities in the industrial park in Reseda," O'Connell said. "We originally took one of the facilities, then expanded over the period of five years until we just ran out of space there, and we needed a larger space. Some of us had moved up to the Santa Clarita Valley over the past year or so, so we looked around the Santa Clarita Valley area and found a good building with 37,000 square feet."
The move has to have been one of the fastest on record for a Top 10 adult producer.
"We just moved in last Sunday night, the 16th; moved over the weekend and didn't lose any time with the moving," O'Connell said. "We were working Friday in Reseda and opened up Monday morning working in Valencia, so it was a long weekend."
"Our own crew did most of the build-out of the space; they did the dry-walling and framing and painting and all of that, running wires and cables and so on. They were just wonderful!" he added. "Now we have our editors there, we have our business office there, all the post-production is there, the shipping and receiving, all our warehousing is there for all our DVDs. We've got every DVD we've ever put out there; we still make them all, which is about 400 DVDs. So we've got room to expand."
"We've got a three-year lease and it's important that we've got room to expand over those three years, because five years ago, before we moved into Reseda, we were in half of a one-bedroom apartment. It was one of our editor's apartments, and it was like the dining room and the living room of her apartment. She kept the bedroom and the kitchen and we rented the remainder of her apartment from her—that was about '06, and it's a little crazy to think I've accumulated so much stuff since then. This is the first time we've been able to go into a space and see everything we have from props and costumes to product and all our equipment, for post-production and so on. I never realized we have that much stuff. Our warehouses before, they were stuffed to the gills; we had enough room for post[-production] and our office facilities, but the warehousing was just outlandish. We had to keep just a small amount of DVDs on hand of every title and everything was stacked high, and now we can expand inventory and keep things more orderly."
Now the new building has its own loading docks in the back, with roll-up doors and everything.
But how about shooting space?
"We have no plans to shoot there at this time," O'Connell stated. "There is space there; we could build it out if we wanted to."
"There's space! Huge!" exclaimed camera operator/director Candi-Girl, obviously excited about the new location.
"Candi-Girl's been doing painting, Sabrina's been doing painting and cleaning out there," O'Connell noted. "Everybody's been keeping busy, but I'm glad we're up there."
Though it appears the company's emails remain the same, they can now be reached by phone at (661) 775-5600 (main office) or (661) 257-1400 (sales).
Pictured: Girlfriends Films' new headquarters
